


As They Are

by patternofdefiance



Series: I Blame Tumblr [14]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Christmas fic, Fingering, Frottage, M/M, So Much Touching, john is happy, pwp fluff, sherlock is happy, written pre-TAB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 14:32:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5669464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patternofdefiance/pseuds/patternofdefiance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s just gone ten p.m. and John is happy.</p><p>Against his chest, dark curls move, and an exhale flares damp and hot against cool skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As They Are

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops forgot to post this one here!
> 
> A (very much belated) Christmas fic for all y'all lovelies, something to nibble on while MaR gets worked on.
> 
> I hope everyone had the best possible Christmas, and that the New Year is treating you right!
> 
> Not beta'd or brit-picked because usual reasons - lemme know if anything major seems off!

It’s just gone ten p.m. and John is happy.

Empty and almost empty cups stand on the mantle, on the coffee table – each bearing the marks of either mulled wine or whiskey or the _torrontes_ they’d had with dinner. Bits of wrapping paper are strewn about, an almost artful twist of ribbon curled throughout here and there. Less haphazardly placed are the presents now unwrapped – a cashmere scarf and an alpaca wool jumper both carefully folded, books on beekeeping and novel convention stacked neatly, and finally a set off papers, heavy weight document parchments all bound together, in pride of place at the very top.

Everything is bathed in the soft and glowing light from the fire burned low, from the lamps turned dim. Everything is bathed in stillness, the hushed silence parting only for a contented sigh, and beyond that, the velvet sound of falling snow.

In the quiet and warm and scattered and _whole_ space, John feels himself progress steadily from happy to incandescent. The light of it tingles in his fingers, sizzles under his skin. It spills from his widening grin; he’s pretty sure it’s blazing from his eyes as he stares up at the ceiling.

Against his chest, dark curls move, and an exhale flares damp and hot against cool skin. John tightens his right arm around shoulders and knobby spine, rocking his head against the cushion of his left arm.

Soft lips shift against John’s skin, unintentionally at first, it seems, but then they press a path to John’s right nipple, and take it in a gentle pinch between them. John hisses a breath, feels the sensation arch his spine and curl his toes.

“Awake, then, are you?” John teases, twining his fingers in Sherlock’s hair. The lips around his nipple close for a quick, hard suck. “Hey!”

Sherlock pulls off with a smirk. “That’s for waking me up.”

“What?” John asks, indignant, but not upset. His nipples are both standing to attention, and his skin is prickling all over, as awake as the rest of him. “How did I –?”

“Thinking,” Sherlock mumbles, dipping his head low to suck at John’s neck. “Could hear you thinking.”

John gets his left arm down from behind his head, gets both arms snug and squeezing around Sherlock. “Oh?”

“And smiling – you smile very loudly, John.”

John beams. “Whose fault might that be?”

Sherlock snorts just as he gets his mouth under John’s jaw, which sets John laughing.

“Sherlock, get up here –” John gets his wish in the form of a firm press of a kiss. Sherlock is a lithe, warm, shifting weight on top of him, every breath shifting his skin against John’s, his hands clutching and grabbing at John’s waist and rib cage. Their legs slide together, apart, in between, and it’s not rutting, exactly, just a sort of lovely friction as their hips cant towards each other.

“John,” Sherlock moans into John’s neck, breath gusting hotly against John’s pulse point.

“Hnn,” John says, using his thighs to shove Sherlock up higher, getting them closer, and now, now everything’s in line, in place, and –

“ _Oh_ ,” Sherlock keens, “ _John_ ,” and grinds his hips down against John’s.

“That’s it, love, come on,” John gasps, and Sherlock’s mouth is back against his, wild and wanting and wet. John groans, gets his hands on Sherlock’s arse, squeezing, massaging as their hips move together, and when he lets his fingers dip further, there’s a lingering slickness to greet him. John trails his fingers up and down, spreading the slip of it, and Sherlock whines into their kissing, shivering, shuddering as John presses and strokes all around where Sherlock wants him.

“You know what I was thinking about?” John asks, circling his middle finger around and around without pushing to the center, without pushing in. “When I woke you?”

Sherlock sighs shakily, shakes his head, his eyes closed so tightly his nose and forehead are wrinkled. He’s sweat-damp already, and John wants to lick it off him, taste him all over, every last scrap and curl and drop of him.

“You,” John breathes, slipping his finger in, just the tip at first. “I was thinking about you, how happy you make me.” He huffs out a breath as Sherlock jerks against him, hard, his body taking John’s finger deeper. “How much you mean to me.” He moves inside Sherlock, stroking, teasing, touching, feeling Sherlock tightening all over, a spring coiling, a rocket barely tethered to the ground. “How much I love you.”

“John,” Sherlock says, “oh, oh, John –” His face, hands, his body – everything freezes, clutches, then falls apart into juddering, shaking motion, John’s name falling from Sherlock’s mouth as if pushed from his body by the clenching pulses of his orgasm.

Sherlock’s come is warm and slick against John, and his breath is in John’s neck and ear, and his hips are still shunting against John’s in the aftermath of his orgasm, and John feels like he’s lit up from the inside out still, but now in addition to that glow there’s a flash and curl of light and heat –

John cries out, clutches at Sherlock as he comes, adding to the mess between them, adding his huffing gasps and groans to the air.

After a moment, their breathing evens out, sighs down to stillness again, and in the hush that follows, there’s still the sound of snow softly striking the windows.

Sherlock drags his head up to look at John. His face is flushed, his lips kiss-swollen, his curls unruly from John’s hands. “John,” he says very solemnly, and John sits up on his elbows a bit.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think at some point we might actually make it to the bed?”

John snorts – which, well, that becomes a giggle. After that, it doesn’t take much for them both to be laughing, a mess of limbs and sticky and sweat piled together on the floor in front of the Christmas tree and the skull and the slowly dying fire.

John wheezes and slumps back as their laughter winds down. His spine protests its sudden re-acquaintance with the wood floor. “You may have a point.” He grins. “Got carried away a bit, though, didn’t we?”

“ _Keep_ getting carried away, it seems,” Sherlock says pointedly.

“Whose fault is that?” John asks – but he’s grinning, can’t seem to stop. “Tell you what – next time, no matter what, we’ll get ourselves to the bed –”

“Or the sofa, at least,” Sherlock adds in, as if it’s a grand concession. As if he’s not the one who tackled John to the floor when there were perfectly functional cushioned surfaces nearby.

“Or the sofa,” John agrees. “No matter what we’re doing or where we are, when the moment strikes, we’ll get ourselves to a slightly softer surface.”

“See that we do,” Sherlock says haughtily, but his lips twitch, betraying his amusement, and John’s always had a thing for that lip twitch, and lately he gets to taste it – so that’s what he proceeds to do.

That kiss, of course, leads to another – and another.

There’s touching, then, lovely, languid, and distracting. There’s a bit of teeth, quite a lot of tongue, and it isn’t until sometime later that they realise they have, yet again, failed to move from their spot in front of the fire, on the floor. There’s laughter, filling the air, hands grabbing and wrestling and tickling.

It’s just gone midnight, and the best Christmas of John’s life is over – but that doesn’t mean the joy subsides, or the loving, teasing, playful mess of their entwined bodies and hearts is any closer to relocating somewhere softer (or quieter, although that stack of documents is a promise, now, between them, a vow of _some day_ ). For now, they turn and twist and hold and gasp, caught up in the moment, in each other. Wherever they are, wherever they end up, it’ll be as they are now.

They take their time.

**Author's Note:**

> For those so inclined, I can be found on tumblr at: patternofdefiance  
> <3<3<3


End file.
